


choose.

by janie_tangerine



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 8x05 I DON'T KNOW HER, BAMF Catelyn, Brienne is the Best, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Episode: s08e05 The Bells, F/M, Fix-It, I Blame Tumblr, Idiots in Love, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Season/Series 08, The Author Regrets Nothing, Tumblr Prompt, jaime lannister is alive clown club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 21:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18881173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: “You held your vow to my girls,” she croaks, and now she’s… half-smiling? Gods, what? “You did your best. I am thankful for it. I want to repay you as a last gift for your service.”Brienne nods, barely. “My lady…?” She’s aware she hasn’t said anything other than that until now, but what should she be doing?“You must choose. You want him, for what he’s worth, or his head?”Wait. Gods, is she telling Brienne that she’s willing to kill him for her or to just leave him to her if she wants him back?





	choose.

**Author's Note:**

> Long story short because that's really all there is to it: I woke up this morning to an anon like _Lady Stone breaks into the GoT program tomorrow and makes Jaime apologize to Brienne for being an idiot or she could have stopped him from going to KL in the first place and made him marry Brienne at sword point._. AND I WENT LIKE FUCK THAT I WANT A LAST FUCK YOU FIXIT BEFORE THE FINALE AIRS SINCE IDK IF I CAN FINISH ANOTHER *TWO* BEFORE TOMORROW. That's exactly what it says on the tin no more no less, HAVE FUN GUYS, and never say that catelyn stark wasn't the greatest MVP in westeros.
> 
> The title is for once FAIRLY OBVIOUS, I own zilch - they're grrm's and if I owned the show stoneheart would have been in it - and I'll saunter back downwards trying to finish at least one of the two fix-its I had in plan. BYE.

This is  _not_  what Brienne had expected to find, coming into King’s Landing.

Not that she wasn’t  _angry_ , but she knew in her heart that there was no chance that Jaime had left with the intention to come back, and in the days spent on the road, she had tried to rationalize it to herself. At the end of it, she only wished they had had more time. Maybe if they did she could have gotten into his head that he was worth more than dying with his sister, that he  _did_  have honor, that whatever he thought he had done still didn’t trump his  _good_  deeds, maybe, maybe, but can a month count more than years of poison?

She never was one for deluding herself. She had thought it might have been. It obviously had not been the case.

So, she had come to see the aftermath, and to find some closure, and if anyone found  _him_ , well… she’d have been glad to bury him in Tarth, if Tyrion let her. She’s sure he wouldn’t say no.

That had been what she had expected.

Which is not what is in front of her right now.

She had gone to the bay Tyrion had told her Jaime had reached to get inside the Red Keep, figuring that if there was a chance to find him in the rubble that’d be the place.

And -

“My… my lady?” She blurts as she notices  _who_  is holding a very much battered and dirty with blood and wounded but  _alive_  Jaime Lannister at sword point.

“ _Brienne_ ,” she croaks.

Gods.

Brienne is  _not_  hallucinating. She’s pretty sure she’s not. But - how - Lady Catelyn was  _dead_ , and now she’s apparently not so much. Her clothing is torn, that lovely red hair of hers is streaked in white, she had to keep a hand on her throat to say her name and when she moves its white, skeletal fingers from it, it shows a gash in it, same as - well. That’s how they killed her, wasn’t it? Her cheeks are torn with ten red thin scars, as if she had clawed at her face with her nails just before they killed her, and  _how could she survive the Red Wedding_ , Brienne doesn’t know, but what she knows is that her blue Tully eyes were fixed on her and then on Jaime, and then she kicks him in the knee and he immediately falls to the ground with a groan and his left hand held up. The golden hand is nowhere to be found.

“ _You idiot_ ,” she croaks again, her sword dangerously close to Jaime’s throat, “ _apologize_.”

He shudders, looking up at her with such a devastated face that she finds it really hard to stay angry at him - there’s dried blood all over him and on one side she’s still angry and a part of her is bleeding red thinking that he couldn’t just tell her that he had to go and she’d have understood instead of doing it the way he did, but his cheeks are also wet with tears and of course the first instinct she has is kneeling down and wipe them away, but she just stays still instead.

Never mind that she’d really like to know  _where has Lady Catelyn even come out from_.

“ _Or_ ,” she keeps on, “ _I did_ not _die for this._   _I could have made you just marry her without sending you to King’s Landing in the first place_.”

She’s barely audible, and Brienne sees a pang of pain on Jaime’s face as soon as she mentions marriage, and then she kicks him in the side again and he groans harder, and Brienne takes a step forward, but Lady Catelyn stops her holding up the other hand.

“Brienne,” Jaime croaks himself, his voice barely audible, his eyes still devastated, “I - I couldn’t presume that you would… accept my apologies, which I’d have given you anyway if -”

“ _Apologize_ ,” Lady Catelyn interrupts, moving the sword closer.

“I’m sorry,” he says, dejectedly. “I thought - I thought I didn’t deserve to be happy if  _she_  wasn’t or if she died, I thought I could just forget it all and I didn’t, but you didn’t deserve any of that and you should leave me here to die, you have the right of it -”

Lady Catelyn kicks him again. “ _Idiot_ ,” she says, and is she… rolling… her eyes? Brienne is sure she’s hallucinating this. “ _Well, he means it_ ,” she croaks again, and then turns towards Brienne, seems to consider something, then she throws away the sword and moves down entirely too swiftly for being a  _living corpse_  and grabs  _his_  own neck with a hand that looks…. way stronger than it had seemed at the first moment. Actually, the way she’s doing it, it seems like she could crush it under her fingers in a moment if she wanted to.

Then she stares at her. “ _You held your vow to my girls_ ,” she croaks, and now she’s… half-smiling? Gods,  _what_? “ _You did your best. I am thankful for it. I want to repay you as a last gift for your service.”_

Brienne nods, barely. “My lady…?” She’s aware she hasn’t said anything other than  _that_  until now, but what should she be doing?

“ _You must choose. You want him, for what he’s worth, or his head?”_

_Wait._  Gods, is she telling Brienne that she’s willing to kill him for  _her_  or to just leave him to her if she wants him back?

She takes a ragged breath, but says nothing as she looks into Jaime’s eyes.

When he left - maybe a part of her was feeling so hurt and betrayed that she might have told Lady Catelyn that she washed her hands off it all, of Cersei Lannister, of his self-destructive notions -

But the thing is, he looks like someone who is  _not_  at all expecting for her to not choose  _his head_ , and he looks like he’s resigned to it, and like he thinks that’s exactly what he deserves.

“ _Him, or his head_?” Lady Catelyn presses.

“I can’t… make a choice,” Brienne says. “There never was any. I’ll have him,” she blurts, and the moment Lady Catelyn releases his throat and he takes in a deep, fast breath, he looks up at her like he can’t believe she actually  _did_  choose him, of course he doesn’t, because when has anyone ever  _chosen him_ , she thinks traitorously?

“ _Then have him_ ,” Lady Catelyn croaks, kicking him in the back again. “ _We don’t get to choose who we love, after all_.”

“But - my lady,  _how -_ ” Brienne starts, but then she smiles slightly, shaking her head.

“ _That’s not important now. And Lannister, if you dare wrong her again, I’m coming for your head without asking her first_.”

Then she turns her back on them and disappears in between the rocks, and for a moment Brienne thinks she’s dreamed the whole fucking thing.

Then she drops to her knees after Jaime, who’s still taking in deep, ragged breaths, and she reaches out, taking his face in her hands again, feeling the rubble and blood on his skin and beard.

When his eyes meet hers, he still looks like he’s ashamed to even hold her stare. She shakes her head slightly.

“Gods,” she says, “stop looking like that and get here already.” She can’t stand this anymore, she can’t stand that he’s alive and  _there_  and he can’t look at her, and then he bursts out in tears as soon as she says it the way he had looked about to when he left Winterfell, and a moment later she drags him closer and holds his head against her shoulder as he blurts apologies against her armor, and she knows it’ll take a while for them to go back to that month in Winterfell that sounds out of a dream these days…

But he’s alive and he’s  _here_  and that has got to count for something, right?

“How,” he blurts, “how could you not choose my head, I’ve - I don’t  _deserve_ it -”

“Too bad,” she whispers against the side of his head, “that it’s not about what you’d deserve and that it seems like if given the choice, I’ll rather have you than not.”

His left hand grasps her arm tighter as he shakes harder against her.

She holds him closer. He’s not dying yet, after all, and they do have time, and if she smiles slightly as she sees a hint of red hair beyond the rocks, she thinks no one can fault her for it.

 

End.


End file.
